At least four people, three women and a man, were killed in alleged Yemeni strikes on Al-Kud on September 2, 2011.

On the second of September, a tweet from @YemenLatestNews reported that four people from the same family were killed as part of a Yemeni airstrike against suspected Al Qaeda operatives. Barakish.net also reported that four individuals were killed, describing the victims as three women and one man. It was reported that a shell struck the civilian home “by mistake”. Witnesses to the bombing as well as a reporter from Barakish.net noted that Al Qaeda operatives have been hiding in civilian homes for cover and have planted mines around the roads and bridges in the Al-Kud region as they fled that area.

Amnesty International gave a more complete report of the event, noting that three women and one man were killed, and the civilians were among the last families left still living in the battered Al-Kud region. The victims were named as Mariam Ahmed Ibrahim Ali al-Sobeihi, her sister Ansa Ahmed Ibrahim Ali al-Sobeihi, their mother So’oud Ali Hassan, and stepfather Abdullah Ali bin Ali. The family, who according to the report, remained in the village to tend to their lambs, were discovered under the remnants of their home by Mariam’s son.

Mariam’s son told Amnesty International: “I took a donkey to a farm that has a well not far from our home. I fetched water for the lambs and then heard loud explosions. I hurried back home and I saw that the ceiling had fallen almost in one piece to the ground. There was so much dust that I couldn’t see well… There was no movement, no sound… so I thought my family had gone somewhere else. I went to nearby homes that belong to my grandfather and my grandmother and I was shouting like a madman: ‘Mum! Auntie!…’ There was no answer. I returned home and the dust had settled by then… My eyes caught an orange cloth with red roses on it from under the rubble; it was my mother’s dress… she was wearing it that day… I couldn’t handle it. I froze to the spot.”

“Then my two cousins, including one whose mother was under the rubble, came from Aden to force us to go with them because they could hear the intense shelling from there. I told them they were all under the rubble… We were all shocked… We started removing the rubble until we reached them. They were covered in dust mixed with blood. They were all dead. We wrapped them in long cloths… we couldn’t bury them in al-Kawd because Ansar al-Shari’a were based in the cemetery… my cousin called his friend from Ja’ar who came with his car and helped us take them to Ja’ar… we buried them in its cemetery.”

The local time of the incident is unknown.